I work for a motel in Longmont. We have been using centurylink's T1 service for last couple of years and it is just way outdated (T1= 1.5/1.5Mbps). We are out of contract so looking at the Centurylink's 40Mbps/5Mbps DSL option. But since it is DSL and not a T service I am wondering how low the speed will get during busy hours. (According to the salesman who wanted to push T service the DSL could get as low as 1.0 Mbps from 40 Mbps). I am also considering Comcast's 50/10 or even 75/15.
Our motel has 48 rooms so when its full there could be as much as 48-60 people hooking online though probably not at the same time. If anybody out there has any input I would greatly appreciate it!

First, I run a small IT business so I deal with Comcast, Centurylink and other broadband vendors all over town. I have the Centurylink 40/5 plan at my home office, where my wife also works as a graphic designer.

The T1 sales guy is lying to you, as DSL is a dedicated connection for just your installation. Cable is in fact a shared service and you can have latency issues during peak usage times in your neighborhood.

For work and recreational use I move ungodly amounts of data over my connection and it has been rock solid. I can always max it out regardless of the time of day.

Your use case will be skewed toward the download side due to streaming videos and such. The 40Mb/s should be able to handle that. You'll also have some guests doing Skype or other video chat, so the 5Mb/s uplink will be good for that as well.

You'll also want to make sure you have a solid router/firewall and a decent WiFI access point. (or more than one)

If you want to do some brainstorming before setting this up, PM me and I'd be glad to help you out with a free assessment. If you also need some help with the implementation, my rates are very reasonable.

As far as I know, no. It hinges so heavily on that last mile infrastructure. The copper cabling in our office building is a complete and utter nightmare, so I'd put the blame there for our horrible DSL experience.

Thanks petra303 for the info.
So if comcast business class is QOS'ed over residential traffic, does that still mean that if there are other businesses around our area that uses comcast business internet, the speed will decrease during peak hours? It sounds like that's not the case with your internet and I am wondering if you live or work at a crowded area.

It will depend entirely on your local community. But normally DSL is not terribly affected by the local traffic. Whereas cable is a shared wire and can lose a great deal of speed, DSL is a dedicated line at least to the local node. The only way traffic will affect it is if the local node is significantly oversubscribed.

I would ask CenturyLink to let you try the DSL for one month simultaneously. Set up two wireless networks. Give one half the rooms one password and the other half the other. See if you experience a major drop in service at any particular time.

I would be a lot more wary of cable. I use Comcast and have mostly been satisfied. But they are consistently listed as one of if not THE worst network provider in the country. And because the basic line is shared, speeds can be radically reduced during peak hours.

I would also look at other commercial providers like MegaPath or Level3. They frequently can and will beat the residential players for commercial level access.

Thanks for the great info. So it sounds like DSL speed is more stable than cable especially during peak hours since the line is not shared. Does this mean that on DSL the UPLOAD speed will also not be affected? I am hoping 5 Mbps upload is enough for our customers since they mostly just send emails.

BTW, the salesman said that T1 service is better than DSL even with slower speed because THE LINE IS NOT SHARED. But it seems that DSL is similar. So with half the price with DSL I can get 30x upload speed...

Ultimately all lines are eventually shared. You eventually hit a point where the line into your building is connected to a nice big fiber pipe with a whole lot of other lines. If it doesn't happen before then, it will happen when you leave the Centurylink network and get onto a trunk line.

With DSL this will happen at a local node. All traffic from this node is then sent to the trunk connection point. With a T1 your line won't hit a node, and you will have a dedicated pipe all the way to the trunk connection point. With cable you are on a shared line as soon as you leave your property.

So from a certain point of view the salesman is right. But the connections from the nodes to the trunk are almost always over allocated. With DSL 99.9% of the speed issues are from the customer to the node. If you are rated for 40mbps/5mbps, I would expect that you will experience something very near that at all times. And this should be true both up and down.

Thanks again everyone for the reply. We are deciding to go with CL DSL 40/5 for now because it sounds like people has had good experience with it and the speed won't be affected to much during peak hours. There is one thing that seems odd to me about the new contract though. The CL rep i have been talking to says there is NO CONTRACT associated with DSL plus phone line service. ONLY VERBAL. This sounds very unusual to me, should I trust the rep?

Thanks for the reply. Good to know that your cable is working well. Is the speed consistent during peak hours as well? Here in Longmont Comcast does offer faster speed up to 100 Mbps but I have heard that that can come down during peak hours and also depends on how much the line is shared.